Here's the link that explains how to setup a web service as a windows service if you're interested: http://www.asp.net/aspnet/overview/owin-and-katana/owin-startup-class-detection Just found out today my probation period is being extended by another 4 weeks, wonder what fresh hell/challenges they'll give me.
That's a helluva lot of ****in around to achieve very little. Then you need to compound it by adding more ****e to achieve little more, and so on. Whatever happened to sticking to the standards? It's easier and quicker to develop. It needs knowledge and skill in how things work but it gets rid of all these bollox frameworks that purport to make it easier. It's Visual Basic all over again.
It was a proof on concept. We have this product that is used by customers either on one machine or a network with a designated server. The new stuff we have been working on is HTML5 which sits in a browser on a form in the application. This is all about being able to write new stuff in HTML/JS but being able to deploy it to 6000+ customers without needing to setup/configure web servers. How would you do it?
You can't avoid setup/configure web servers. The HTML has to be served from somewhere, unless you're suggesting deploying the entire HTML as static pages to 6000+ customers? That's madness. I now understand why you were mucking about with Windows Services on the Katana framework if it was to avoid using a web server. Remember then, that Windows Services would still have to be deployed and configured on servers. In a choice of configuring IIS or Windows Services on servers I'd go with IIS. It's the natural fit for what you want to do. Web servers are not difficult to configure. The entire web application should be on a web site hosted by the web server of your choice (IIS or Apache). Let the designers knock up the HTML pages to get the look and feel and general structure of the site. The programmers take each page and add the Javascript to take care of whatever needs taking care of (dynamically rendering additional HTML, responding to DOM events, and so on) When database data is required you add a service to the website (an ashx under IIS; php or perl under Apache) which calls a stored procedure in the database to return the desired data. I would suggest that the stored proc returns the data as XML (Sql Server, Oracle, MySQL are all very capable of returning a result set as XML). The reason for returning the data as XML is that it makes it extremely easy to manipulate in the service. For example run it through XSL to produce JSON which can be returned from the service, or merely return the XML from the service. Remember to set the appropriate content type to specify what you are returning from the service. Javascript on a page can call a service by simply using an XmlHttpRequest (XHR) instance. You set the URL of the service on the XHR as well as any other data and parameters and headers you desire. When the service returns you check HTTP status code and the content type to verify everything worked and what was returned (JSON, XML, etc) and proceed to do what you want to do with the data, for example iterate the JSON or XML to plug the data into the HTML of the page by manipulating the DOM. It sounds more complex than it actually is, and gives you a nice clean design. Additionally, you'll find what happens is you will naturally start building up a library of Javascript code which you share among all developers on the project. For example, a generic Javavscript object that wraps the XHR to set the most common options and handles waiting upon the service return, checking status, etc Also, there are several existing Javascript libraries available (extjs, jquery, node, etc) to help you with the Javascript side of things, like calling services, rendering html, user interaction with forms, tables, trees, dialogs, etc. That would be how I would do it. In fact, it is how I do it.
There's another thing Gambol: our customers want their data on their machines in their places of work, not exposed to the internet. Confidential data plus what happens if the internet connection goes down? They will not be able to work. Any part of the product hosted on a website is never going to happen.
. Fuxake, you weren't wrong about being a nerd, were you? To think that in the 21st century, ****'s who say stuff like that last sentence can actually expect to get laid? World's ****ed up, man. Now give me your dinner money ye little twat..
Wow an informative and entertaining thread on Not606 would be nothing like this tedious borefest. Mick post some economics ****e to liven things up please.
Doesn't have to be on the internet. It can be on their local network server along with the database. So your boss is seriously wanting to write a web application without a web server. Where does he expect the web pages to be served from? He plans to install all pages on every single 6000+ desktop machines and have users open the pages themselves in a browser? He should be sacked.